Saturday, September 20, 2014

GORGE YOURSELF: CORPORATE-SHILLS NEWS REGURITATION DIET

The Corporations in Your Diet

"Scholars
and activists—like Raj Patel, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Walden
Bello, Alice Waters and Vandana Shiva—have illustrated the growing power
of large corporations in the global food system and the negative
consequences this dynamic has for our health, wallets, environment and
political system." (Image: captcreate)

“Native
advertising” has recently emerged as an important financing strategy
for news publications in print and online. Recognizing that traditional
Internet and print advertising is no longer very effective in motivating
consumer demand, and that media fortunes depend on advertising
revenues, the media and corporate advertisers have joined forces to
combine journalism with advertising in the context of a single news
story. What appears to be a traditional piece of news is actually an
article sponsored by a corporate entity, designed to increase interest
in that corporation’s products or services. John Oliver’s funny and
arresting coverage of this issue is definitely worth watching. Among the
most noteworthy recent examples of native advertising are The Atlantic’s coverage of scientology (an article on scientology sponsored by the Church of Scientology) and The New York Times’ coverage of the plight of women in prison (an article sponsored by the Netflix show Orange is the New Black).

In
addition to its appalling implications for democratic debate and
freedom of information, native advertising has huge implications for our
health and wellbeing. How we eat, what we consider to be nutritious,
and the food products we buy at the grocery store are influenced by the
merger of advertising and news reports on health and nutrition. Scholars
and activists—like Raj Patel, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Walden
Bello, Alice Waters and Vandana Shiva—have illustrated the growing power
of large corporations in the global food system and the negative
consequences this dynamic has for our health, wallets, environment and
political system. Against this backdrop, native advertising shows how
corporate power extends into our most intimate and personal decisions
and behaviors.

Take for instance this recent article from the Huffington Post,
sponsored by the Whole Grain Council. The article notes that September
is “Whole Grains Month”, a time to celebrate “amaranth, barley,
buckwheat, millet, oats, quinoa, rye, sorghum, spelt, teff, triticale
and other whole grain wonders”. The article details the extensive
nutritional benefits of a diet full of whole grains: “Really, though,
everyone wins with whole grains. They're complex carbs for good energy,
and offer a host of vitamins, minerals and nutrients refined wheat
products lose in processing.” The author notes that she “loves the Whole
Grains Council and the traditional nourishing whole foods of the world
they advocate.*” Note the asterisk at the end of this sentence—it
appears in the original and refers to the following statement at the end
of the article: “I was not compensated for this post but as one of the
Whole Grains Council's Make the Switch bloggers, I received a few whole
grain goodies to sample, for which I say thank you. All opinions
expressed are my own.”

What the article doesn’t mention is that
the Whole Grains Council—which misleadingly calls to mind some
beneficent organization of moms and grandmas intent on ensuring that you
eat well—is actually a trade association of the various corporations
that dominate national and international trade and processing of cereal
grains. Its founding membership includes multinational giants Frito Lay,
General Mills, Hain Celestial Group, and Snyder’s of Hanover. While
whole grains may indeed have a role to play in fostering good nutrition
(this is a much debated issue despite all the hype), what is certain is
that these companies reap large financial benefits from convincing us
that whole grains are good for our health.

Elsewhere in the food
system, Andrew Kimbrell—executive director of the Center for Food
Safety—reports that the forum to which he was invited to discuss
genetically modified foods was actually wholly sponsored by Monsanto,
having been engineered to look “authoritative” and “journalistic”.
Meanwhile, on Web MD, a conversation with a pharmacist about weight loss
is sponsored by Walmart Pharmacy, where one could presumably purchase
all of the wonderful weight loss cures (from diet pills to acai berry
supplements) recommended by the pharmacist.

Big companies that
don’t care about your well-being make lots of money propagating
nutritional and dietary advice that tries to get you to purchase their
products. In this context, native advertising is hugely problematic
because it purposefully conceals the corporate interests that lie behind
media reporting on diet and nutrition, preventing consumers from making
independent and educated decisions about their health and well-being.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Sasha
Breger Bush is an Assistant Professor of International Relations in the
Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado Denver.
Her first book, Derivatives and Development, was published in 2012 by
Palgrave Macmillan. Sasha can be reached at sasha.breger@ucdenver.edu .